Standing Sushi Bar has been around... almost 8 years now? Well, in August 2017 it will have been 8 years. Somewhat surprising to think about.

Over time as we've grown to different concepts and more branches, and as I've gotten more experienced in this F&B industry, there's lots of administrative and back-end work that take up more and more of my focus.

Almost every night I get on Instagram and search our hash tags and geotags to see what people have been posting. The pictures I like most are the ones where it's not just a photo of the food but when there's a smiling person in it.

I love the Bras Basah neighborhood. It's in the heart of the city, easily accessible by public transport, and has a mish-mash of shops, schools, and demographics. It had been a sleepy place, but the past couple of years has brought more people walking around. (Of course our Standing Sushi Bar at 8 Queen Street has been a big part of this neighborhood, since 2010).

The National Design Centre opened a couple years ago, and Kapok Singapore took over a large retail and cafe space on the ground floor. The folks that work there are super-friendly and it's a great spot for a coffee and chat.

They used to serve food but it stopped so their kitchen has been unused, which is a shame since it's such a nice space.

So! We've decided to do a pop-up there until September 6. It's a joint effort between our project, Shinkansen, and our friends' Paper Crane.

We've got our Omega 3 Donburi on the menu as well as a rotating list of other specials such as a pulled pork don, falafel salad, and southern fried chicken.

Open for lunch and dinner from now until September 6!

Kapok Singapore is at the National Design Centre.111 Middle Road01-05 National Design CentreSingapore 188969

A few more months have flown by and it's brought a raft of openings for us! For our Japanese-influenced salad bar, Shinkansen, we opened in two more locations: United Square in Novena and 100 AM mall in Tanjong Pagar. Since Shinkansen is a new concept for us, I felt that the faster we could put it in front of people, the quicker we would gain market recognition. The salad and healthy food area is a tough battleground though! I need to be clearer with what Shinkansen offers (create-your-own salad, rice, quinoa, or soba bowls using a mixture of Japanese and Western ingredients).

Japanese salad bar Shinkansen at 100 AM in Singapore's Tanjong Pagar. Additional locations in Raffles Place and Novena.

On October 13 we also opened another branch of Standing Sushi Bar. It's located at Income @ Raffles, which is the building formerly known as Hitachi Tower. I suppose one could view it as a return to Raffles Place as the first branch of Standing Sushi Bar was at One Raffles Place (formerly known as OUB Centre... I guess with all the development there's lots of 'formerly known' places). The new SSB is located at:

16 Collyer Quay02-02 Income at RafflesSingapore 049318

It's the first time I've used a designer for Standing Sushi Bar, and it definitely looks better than the other branches. I suppose my background in information technology and Microsoft Excel didn't translate into gorgeous restaurants! So it's definitely great that Wynk Collaborative applied their design chops to SSB. (See their site for more photos of the new Standing Sushi Bar).

Standing Sushi Bar at Income at Raffles. Located right by Raffles Place MRT.

Now that these places have opened, it's time to buckle down and commence the real work! We need to make sure that people are aware we exist and when they come that they will have a delicious and positive experience. For the latest Standing Sushi Bar, we're making it more of an izakaya and bar at night with a few Japanese cocktails, a good selection of sake, shochu, and umeshu, and also Japanese craft beer and $5 Asahi to wet your whistle. Food-wise we have a big menu of $5 bites at night and also will be introducing an awesome omakase soon.

I'll have to dedicate a different entry for the new Standing Sushi Bar!

Knock knock, anyone home? I can't believe we are halfway into 2014. The blog has collected a bit of dust; it's always on my mind to jot a few things down here and there, but it gets bumped down the list of things to do when various urgent things pop up.

2014 has been a pretty exciting time for me and the business. Getting Shinkansen established, the opening of The Secret Mermaid, distribution of spirits with Liberty Spirits Asia, tinkering with Standing Sushi Bar, and working on a refresh of Tanuki Raw has been good. With a few years of F&B under my belt and many lessons learned it's about time that I apply them. The next three months will bring 2 new branches of Shinkansen (well, actually in the next two weeks) and 1 branch of Standing Sushi Bar. Some spaces opened up that seemed ripe with opportunity, so I decided to go for it.

Part of me thinks we're being a little aggressive with expanding, but I feel Singapore is one of those places where you almost have to expand or die. If you only have a few branches your business is at the mercy of your lease. The restaurants might be doing well but if you're unable to renew your leases then poof... your business is gone.

Of course the big issue that F&B operators grapple with (and probably true across the service and retail industry) is staffing. As we expand we need more staff, but it's desperately hard to find local staff. Would you commit to new spots without having any idea how you're going to staff it? (I do, but whether that's a good thing is debatable).

I think it's worth spending more time looking outside of Singapore. There are a few interesting opportunities in Malaysia and Indonesia. It's been exciting getting on planes to go see what's happening over there. Even if nothing pans out, it's fun to brainstorm and think about what one can do in different cities.

Anyway, a new branch of Shinkansen opens tomorrow at United Square in Novena!

Hunkered down the past few months working on the newest addition to the Standing Sushi Bar family. Very happy that we have (finally) opened at Ocean Financial Centre. The restaurant is called Shinkansen and it is a sushi, sashimi, rice, salad, and noodle bowl place that lets you order one of our specials or customize your own bowl. Pick from over 35 ingredients to put on top of sushi rice, brown rice, mixed greens, or soba noodles and you have a delicious healthy meal!

Shinkansen is located at the heart of Raffles Place, right by Raffles Place MRT. It's inside the Ocean Financial Centre building at level B1.

Outside of the United States of America, there isn't much of a tipping culture. In the US though, it's expectation at a restaurant that you tip your server 18% - 20% of your bill.

Jay Porter, owner of The Linkery restaurant in San Diego, challenged that notion and switched from a tipping policy to one of a service charge - every bill automatically had an 18% service charge added to it (in Singapore it's a 10% service charge).

He wrote a series of columns explaining his reasoning for doing so and what some of the ramifications were. Unfortunately The Linkery has recently closed so I'll never get to try it, but it's interesting to see how many of the negative reviews on Yelp were based on having the service charge added.

Jay brought up the point that customers wanted to be able to control the tip because they felt they had power over the servers - they could use the tip to reward or punish the server based on their perception of the service provided. What other job puts the employee in a position like that?

This is
turning into a familiar occurrence; seems like the only time that I sit down
and update the blog is when I’m in transit.
Currently en route from London to New York City. After the 12.5 hour flight from Singapore to
London, I feel pretty wiped out. 9 more
hours to get to New York. I can’t wait to get into bed. Got a room via
Airbnb.com, and since my past two experiences with them were pretty good I’m
confident it will be a pleasant setup.

From August
2009 until April this year, I’ve been running the Standing Sushi Bar “office”
as a one man show. I use office
liberally as it was a home office and intermixed along all the papers and
statements were my three cats tearing through it all. With the growth of the restaurants it wasn’t
feasible to keep running things from home, so I got a small space at GSM
Building. I’m glad I spent slightly more
for a room with a window.

My first
office hire was one of our service crew members that had been working with us
for over 2 years. She was looking for a
switch and I thought why not join the office?
So she’s doing a jack-of-all-trades position, you could say
administration and a bit of human resources.
The second hire was referred by a friend and is focused on building up
our franchise offering. I forget what we
used to say it in the corporate world… basically creating something so that
people can replicate it “out of the box.” (Different from thinking out of the box).

What kind
of roles do you think would be critical to fill right at the start? Assuming there was only you at the beginning,
what role would you have hired next to work in the office?

How could I leave out the granddaddy of oyster bars? While I was in New York City I dropped by Grand Central Oyster Bar, located in Grand Central Station. I felt like one of the Mad Men characters slurping an oyster and downing a martini before catching a commuter train home.

When I travel to different cities I always enjoy checking out their oyster bars and Japanese restaurants. I like to tell myself that it's market research, but ultimately I just like these places and want to feel less guilty about spending oodles of money on raw little bivalves.

In Anchorage, Alaska, I had the chance to check out this lovely small oyster bar called the Bubbly Mermaid.

It could seat around 8 people. There was a large selection of champagne and on that day only one type of oyster... but we could choose to have it prepared in a myriad of ways (including natural). Small space means people become friendly with each other, and throw in the natural friendliness of the folks in Alaska and it was a warm time chatting with the folks there.

A few days later we found ourselves in Portland, Oregon and wandering by the riverfront. Needing a break we ducked into Dan & Louis Oyster Bar. There was a cool girl shucking oysters, manning the bar, and chatting with the customers. I was amazed at her ability to multi-task. Even more amazed when she said it was only her second day at work.

Two years ago I met a restaurant owner, and he told me about
his rocky path to success. He said for
years his business muddled along until one day people came in droves and kept
coming back.

2013 for Standing
Sushi Bar is the year when something “clicked.” Since January, the 8 Queen Street branch has
been packed out nightly (except Sundays, that’s another nut to crack), the
Marina Bay Link Mall location has boomed up, and Tanuki Raw is happy hour madness. Knock on wood this continues; it’s as if a
piano, cargo truck, and building were all lifted off my shoulders… still
leaving a monkey on my back. (That may
not have made sense to anyone but me :D)

So why did business pick up so dramatically?

My guess is a combination of promotions, ads, publicity, and
increasing brand awareness. Sounds like obvious
stuff, but the confluence of events necessary to reach a tipping point (I hate
myself when I use that phrase, but it’s applicable) came through some planning
and luck.

Promotions
– I had toyed with various incentives to get folks in during off-peak periods,
but at the beginning of the year I decided there was no point in half-assing
around with weak promotions. My
philosophy is, it’s attractive to the diner if it’s making you (the business)
feel uncomfortable.

Ads / Getting the word out there – Of course I wanted people
to know about the new promotions, so I spent more on ads and made it a point to
let people know in e-mail about what new things we were offering. It was great that with Facebook ads and
attractive offerings, people helped by sharing the information along their
network.

Publicity – There was a good amount of press (traditional
and online) focused on Tanuki Raw since
it recently opened. Almost every article
referenced that it was by the folks behind the Japanese restaurant Standing Sushi Bar,
which brought renewed attention to SSB at the same time as we were launching
the new happy hour and weeknight concepts.

Increasing brand awareness – After 3 years, we’re not the
new kid on the block anymore. I would
hope plenty of people have heard about Standing Sushi Bar! I think that people have, and many of them
may have made assumptions about the restaurant (too far, no seats, etc.) so
never considered coming. After seeing
things shared by their friends and reading the name in the press, it may have
been the nudge they needed to check us out.

I always wondered whether it was true what my friend
said. Seems like it.

It's funny to think the strongest martinis I've had in a year have been from a sushi bar. We just launched a happy hour at the Standing Sushi Bar Marina Bay Link Mall branch so being a good owner (read: food and drink sampler) I went down there to see how things went. 3 drinks later I was in bed before midnight, which never happens, and now am awake at 4+ in the morning.

So martinis in a sushi bar underground in a business district shopping mall. Is this something that is actually going to work? Will people come to drink? Who knows, but since the core business at Raffles Place and the financial centre is all during the weekday lunchtime, it allows us to do whatever the heck we want during the evening service.

Standing Sushi Bar Marina Bay Financial Centre happy hour

The start of the year has been interesting; perhaps full of a "I'm going to do what I want to do" spirit. In the past I think I worried about whether the staff were agreeable to my decisions, but these days as long as I "own the decision" then I'm comfortable plowing forward. Maybe it's a checks and balances thing with the staff being cautious while I lean towards recklessness.

Anyway, on to other matters! Tanuki Raw has been getting a fair bit of attention, which is pretty awesome. "Build it and they will come," as the line goes in Field of Dreams. Though it's more like, "Give them oysters and martinis and they will come."

Tanuki has finally opened and thank goodness it's a bar since I could sure use a drink.

We're well into our soft-launch period and it's been great receiving feedback from the folks that have dropped in. We need to tweak our menu to make a better delineation between what the Japanese items are versus the "fusion" ones and also which dishes are good for sharing and which are meant as individual entree size.

Staff is trained up, bar is stocked, the point of sale machine is finally working (on the first night it completely failed... definitely Murphy's Law), and the chefs are able to consistently execute the food items well!

So what's next... time to start beating the drums and make people aware that we exist. We're also adding more items to the menu and gearing up to offer some lunch sets for the weekday office crowd.

Three years have passed since throwing open the doors of Standing Sushi Bar. It’s been a whirlwind of a ride; setting up
branches at Queen Street and Marina Bay, opening in Jakarta, Indonesia, and
putting in chairs for people to sit.
Three years of sake, sushi, and Japanese food. It’s been heartening to see all the support
from you all (yes, dear reader, I make the assumption that if you read this
blog, you’re a supporter!) and there are exciting plans lined up for Standing
Sushi Bar.

I’ve always envisioned Standing Sushi Bar as a modern
restaurant serving straightforward tasty Japanese food. We get a little experimental here and there,
but as people would expect, we stick with Japanese.

The idea of a martini paired with oysters and sashimi has
been gnawing at me. There is something
delightful in the mix of a crisp, chilled martini cutting through the brine and
mineral bite of an oyster, and what’s better at bringing out the pure bright
taste of sashimi than a bone dry martini?

We're in the midst of refreshing our menu at Standing Sushi Bar Queen Street. Photos of all the items have been taken, pricing has been determined, and the main thing left to do is layout the menu and then print it.

We've been having a lot of discussions about whether or not the menu should contain pictures for every food item. I vote against having pictures in menus. In my opinion it makes a menu unwieldy because of the number of pages and it also looks cheesy and messy. Of course the flip side of the argument is that people won't have to ask service crew as many questions as they can just assume that the item ordered will correspond with the photo. Some people also believe that seeing pictures of the food make people hungrier or want to "eat with their eyes."

I've decided to forego pictures on our main menu this time for a few reasons, the primary one being speed (trying to adjust the layout with pictures meant starting over a bunch of times) and trying to make the overall presentation look "cleaner." I also like the idea of having people be pleasantly surprised by ordering the food (in text) and being happy with the visual presentation of the food once it gets to their table.

What's your opinion? Do you prefer pictures on a menu or you're fine without it? Does it make a huge difference to you? Why do you think Western restaurants get away without having pictures on the menu compared to Japanese restaurants?